The Five Red Herrings

A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery

by Dorothy L. Sayers

Paperback, 368 pages

Published Dec. 2, 2014 by Harper Paperbacks.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-234164-8

(9 reviews)

FIVE RED HERRINGS and a death that smelled of murder. The body was huddled on the pointed rocks alongside the stream. The artist might have fallen, but there were too many suspicious elements in his death, especially when the six prime suspects had wished him dead. Five of them were red herrings, but the sixth had cared enough to plot an elaborate murder scheme which baffled everyone, including the dashing and clever LORD PETER WIMSEY.

30 editions

Stephen Hayes reviewed The five red herrings. by Dorothy L. Sayers (The collected editionof detective stories by Dorothy L. Sayers -- vol 8)

None

3 stars

It's a while since I read a whodunit, so I picked this one out in the library, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery. The plot revolves around a community of artists in south-western Scotland, and when one of them is killed Lord Peter Wimsey decides that only another artist could have done it. With six suspects who had motive, the police have to disentangle complex alibis involving train timetables.

I don't think it is one of Dorothy Sayers's best, and though she knew that Scotland has a Procurator Fiscal rather than a coroner, as in England, she apparently missed that the Scottish equivalent of the English offence of manslaughter is culpable homicide. As this is an old book, first published in 1931, no doubt countless other readers have also pointed that out before.